Twinkly Lights

One of my favorite things about this time of year is the twinkly lights. I love the light imagery abundant in the midwinter holidays—the strands woven through bushes and strung along eaves, the Hanukah and Advent and Saint Lucy candles, the Yule logs. For those of us who sometimes feel keenly the dark and the cold, the shadow parts of ourselves, those holiday lights are a tonic and reminder to stoke our own fires.

“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us,” Laura Esquivel wrote in Like Water for Chocolate, “but we can’t strike them all by ourselves.”

Friends, in this holiday season and always, may you find the people and things that light you up, and keep them close at hand. Walk away from those who blow out your matches. Keep burning in the heart of winter.